What is the future possibility of creating an engine that can split molecules and then bond them again?

Question

To create energy? For example, a FCV needs hydrogen tanks. Can we make a machine that can pull the hydrogen from water and store hydrogen that way? Would the energy made from the FCV engine be greater than the energy required to pull the hydrogen from the water?

Answer 1

Sounds like perpetual motion. I'm sure that the energy required to split the molecules is at least as much as that released when they recombine. The only advantage would be if you used waste heat or solar power to produce the fuel, and then put that in your fuel cell.

You know people have been looking at Hydrogen power seriously for at least 30 years and we still aren't using it. Hydrogen is not very easy to or efficient to store. Do some research on hydrogen storage. If you can work that out, generating the hydrogen won't be a problem.

Answer 2

What it sounds like you'd like to do is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then combine these again in a fuel cell to get electricity and then roll silently down the California highway whilst creating no CO2.

You can split water with an electric current, and that'll give you hydrogen and oxygen. But when you combine these gases, you'll get less energy than you used to separate them. For one thing, there's no way to split water without heating it, and that heat is invariably lost.

So that power has to come from somewhere; and it ain't gonna be the sun, not for a very long time, if ever. Solution to a pollution-free automobile: take the train.

Answer 3

Zero sum game. The energy to split molecules will be equal to the energy gained from joining them together again, minus the friction (entropy) that happens in the process. We're all screwed and we're all going to wear out and die.

The only really efficient way to deal with this stuff is to get out of the chemical reaction realm and into the controlled fusion reaction game. Lotsa money there. Lotsa power. End of line for Middle East Oil.

Answer 4

No, the energy required for electrolysing or some how dissociating water into hydrogen will be more than the energy which is released during the recombination, since no process is 100 per cent efficient.

Answer 5

HM sounds like your talking about cold fusion . What you would have to do is rearrange the molecules around an atom and create helium this can be accomplish with a glue on field which they all ready have . Look in the web for ( Nano Detonators )

Answer 6

YES.